Russians take Stanisławów again

On the morning of 11 August 1916 (29 July by the Julian calendar) the first units of the Russian Ninth Army entered Stanisławów, the largest town of Pokuttia and an important railway junction in Eastern Galicia. The troops of the Austro-Hungarian Third Army had left it the night before, after a lost four-day battle, and fallen back behind the Bystrzyca Sołotwińska river, west of the town. This date for the Russian entry is given by the Austrian official history and by Russian and English-language studies. The British chronology of the war, on which our timeline is based, records the capture of Stanisławów as early as 10 August, the day on which the battle ended and the decision to retreat was taken.

This was the third time in the war that the Russians had taken Stanisławów. They first entered it at the turn of August and September 1914, and the second time the same Ninth Army of General Platon Lechitsky retook it in March 1915. In June 1915, after the breakthrough at Gorlice, the town returned to Austrian hands.

The first attack

After occupying Bukovina and Kolomyia, Lechitsky’s army, on the left wing of the South-Western Front, turned north-west towards Stanisławów and the Dniester. A blow in this direction threatened the rear of General Felix von Bothmer’s German-Austrian South Army, which was still holding on along the Strypa. On 28 July three Russian corps broke through the front of Colonel-General Hermann Kövess’s Third Army at Ottynia and Jezierzany and drove the defenders, among them the German 105th and 119th Infantry Divisions, back towards Tłumacz. Lechitsky, however, did not exploit his success. On 30 July, despite pressure from Brusilov, he halted the attack and began to dig in in front of the enemy’s new positions. The Austrian official history charges him with making the same mistake as at Okna in June.

Stavka in Mogilev then concluded that the best chance of success lay precisely south of the Dniester. On its instructions Brusilov transferred to the Ninth Army the headquarters of XVIII Corps with two divisions from the neighbouring Seventh Army, and a Cossack division from the Third Army. On 6 August, however, Lechitsky was told that if necessary he could postpone the attack on Stanisławów, because holding Bukovina was more important. Romania’s entry into the war was expected any day.

The battle for Stanisławów

From dawn on 7 August the Russian artillery shelled the front from the Prut to the Dniester, and at noon the infantry went in. The main blow fell on the northern wing of Kövess’s army, between Ottynia and the Dniester, where six Russian divisions broke through the positions of Austro-Hungarian cavalry fighting on foot and of the German divisions of General Kraewel’s group. Cavalry poured through the gap, and the Russian II Cavalry Corps crossed the Dniester. In the evening Kövess ordered a retreat to the reserve positions. On 8 August the Russians broke through those too, at Tłumacz and west of Ottynia. The roads towards Stanisławów were jammed with supply columns and broken units. The chief of staff of Archduke Charles’s army group, General Hans von Seeckt, asked for help from Hindenburg, who sent several German regiments to the Dniester. The Ottoman XV Corps, which was just then travelling by rail to the Eastern Front, was also sent to the South Army.

The reinforcements could no longer change the outcome of the battle. On 9 August the defenders fell back to the eastern approaches of Stanisławów, and in the Carpathians the Russian XI Corps took the important height of Pirs Dora. On the afternoon of 10 August the Russian XXXIII Corps struck in dense masses at the exhausted German divisions south of the Dniester and pushed them westward. General Kraewel ordered a retreat behind the Bystrzyca, and the neighbouring group of General Hadfy had to follow suit and abandon Stanisławów. The night retreat went along roads clogged with supply columns and refugees, but the exhausted Russians did not interfere with it. On the morning of 11 August the Russians set off in pursuit and entered the abandoned Stanisławów, but the Austrians had destroyed all the bridges over the Bystrzyca Sołotwińska, which stopped the Russian columns just beyond the town.

Consequences

The loss of Stanisławów forced the South Army to retreat as well. During the night before 11 August Bothmer was ordered to withdraw his corps from the Strypa behind the Złota Lipa by 14 August, so that the Russians, advancing along the Dniester, would not get into their rear. The Austrians also feared for the oil field at Borysław. The situation was made worse by the fact that on 9 August the Italians had taken Gorizia, so the Isonzo front also needed reinforcements, and the Central Powers were reckoning with an early Romanian attack. More German divisions, brought in by General Erich von Falkenhayn, set off from France for Galicia.

The Russians, however, no longer had the strength for further pursuit, and in the following days they halted in front of the enemy’s new positions on the Bystrzyca Sołotwińska. The battle for Stanisławów was one of the last great victories of the Brusilov offensive, and the front west of the town settled down for many months. Stanisławów itself, where almost half of the dwelling houses were destroyed during the war, remained in Russian hands until the summer of 1917.